Anyone who has read this blog for very long knows that I cook up ideas while I am day dreaming. Dozens of them, little inventions, products, things that make certain tasks easier or even make networks more secure. Recently I had an idea that would encourage healthy choices, so I figured it would help with a few of our first world problems.

No Original Ideas

I’ve come to the conclusion that there are few truly original ideas. That’s why I share mine here on my blog. I have no plans to form a start-up and run with any of them. I have a lifestyle and family to protect after all! 🙂 In this case I decided to look up to see if anyone had already done something similar and it turns out they had. The closest thing I found to my idea was an App called AgingBooth. Agingbooth basically allows you to see what you might look like in the future, however that’s where the similarities stop.

Joe – Actual Results with AgingBooth App (Android)

What this App would do

This app will take the image you take of yourself but also have you input some general health and lifestyle information. Some of the items might include:

Your birth date

How much and what kinds of exercise you get per day/week

Eating habits

Height/Weight

If you smoke and if so how much

If you drink and if so how much

Once you enter the baseline variables, the app will generate an image of what you might look like based on your current lifestyle choices in several points in the future (or just a manually inputted # of years). It would also show you an anticipated weight and life expectancy. Admittedly the life expectancy question will be tough but there is obviously data based on studies that show statistical impacts of certain lifestyle decisions. Pretty much anything that there is good data available for could be included.

Encouraging Healthy Choices

To make the app more valuable, you will be able to alter your lifestyle variables. You could for example indicate you stop smoking, or even start drinking heavily – to see the effects it will have on your appearance and life expectancy. People using the app could do very long term lifestyle planning, something many of us rarely do.

Other Layers

The potential is there for additional layers. Certainly it would be great to project at what point you will be able to achieve certain physical challenges. Examples would be hiking to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, running a marathon, or even finishing a triathlon.

Users could enter in their achievements and get badges within a social component of the app. The social layer could include accountability partners, people you agree to automatically share your information with. These people could send you notes of encouragement, congratulate you for achievements or encourage you to take up kayaking and give up smoking because it will add years to your life.

Integration with Other Health Programs

There are a number of devices and programs that track physical activity, caloric intake and all kinds of other health data. The possibilities to integrate some of these programs into this app are real.

Legal Issues

The data in the app will be as scientific as possible, but there are obvious legal issues with regards to life decisions. A skilled team of lawyers will have to shield the designer from being liable in law suits. I’m not a lawyer, but maybe making it for “based on science but designed for fun and entertainment purposes only” and include lots of “refer to your physician before making xyz decisions about your blah, blah”. I’d welcome a legal perspective in the comments!

While spot checking traffic on Google Maps today I went to refresh the map I’d created and it disappeared. I then realized that you need to create a link using the Google maps interface in order to be able to refresh the window correctly. It dawned on me that others are encountering a similar issue and might find a simple effective link easier to use. This video demonstrates that and will save you travel and searching time. I’ve found that often here in the Bay Area you can save a lot of time by waiting 15-20 minutes especially coming out of peak times. I also will use the custom traffic map to decide which way to go depending on where the worst traffic is at the time. Hopefully this will also save you time.

More from the idea farm… what else can you do with this?

For starters you can use your URL shortener like mine to create a really simple link that you can reference at any time from any device (where you have not already bookmarked the link) For example I turned this messy link:

Email it to your smart phone
By emailing this link to your smart phone such as my Motorola Droid, you will be prompted to open it using either a browser or Google Maps. By selecting Google maps you will be able to quickly and easily view the map on your phone without fumbling around. You could also create and send a link to a friend or loved one travelling to the airport, etc. I ran into a similar situation several weeks ago when my Podcast guest @dcfemella was running late in DC traffic. I was able to relay a little bit of information to her. Next time I find myself in that situation, I will mail them a link to their smart phone.

Do you have other ideas about how you could re-purpose this Traffic Map link?

The Idea in a Nutshell

It is a simple idea, I promise. You propose changes to any website, the intermediary website will allow commentary and a preview of what the proposed changes would look like. That content can then be used by the target of the proposed changes.

An Example

For example, let’s say you visit a blog and you read an article and really like it but have ideas how it can be improved. If you provide proofing services this could be career oriented outreach. You use the browser add on for the proposing website and it brings you to an editable version of the page. You make the changes you would like to “propose” then tweet it out to Twitterverse, Share via Facebook, clip via Amplify, etc. The blog owner may notice a trackback, a google alert or some analytics data. They can organically discover the modified version of the article. They can even grab the proposed changes and insert them in the blog, preferably including some citation to the individual that modified the content. This could be enforced via some type of embed option. There could be a social network built out of the proposing website, voting on the best changes, recognition, prizes and awards.

Provide input

Now that I’ve shared the root idea, would you like to propose features to improve this idea? Or maybe you want to ship me chests full of money, armies of interns and great advisers to try it out, either way I’d love to hear your thoughts.

In Joe's day job he helps manufacturers eliminate waste in their engineering, CNC programming and machining departments. He is currently 2018-2019 chair of the Sacramento Valley SME, an avid Maker and current Mechatronics student.